George Or­well’s 1984 has a Big Brother per­ni­ciously watch­ing all cit­i­zens. In In­dia, he still con­tin­ues, with a pli­ant me­dia and drones. How­ever, the Small Brother is catch­ing up and the Big Brother has no clue how to han­dle. The Small Brother -the one-man, one smart­phone cit­i­zen jour­nal­ist has self-re­ported his ef­forts, splashed it all around the globe through the in­ter­net and smashed di­a­bolism of the Modi-me­dia.

THE NEO-BIG BROTHER -IN­DIAN PRIME MIN­IS­TER NAREN­DRA MODI, rev­el­ling in his pride and in­vin­ci­bil­ity syn­drome, ig­nored the Small Brother. Now, with the Grace of God and no other hu­man or so­cial ex­pla­na­tion, a rev­o­lu­tion is un­fold­ing on the out­skirts of Delhi.

For months to­gether, in Pun­jab and else­where, the Small Broth­ers, apart from ground protests, with his smart­phone, used so­cial me­dia plat­forms plead­ing the gov­ern­ment to lis­ten to them and an­nul the anti-peo­ple farm laws. The Modi me­dia not only ig­nored them but even branded them with dif­fer­ent nomen­cla­tures.

While Modi me­dia ma­nia man­i­fests, the cit­i­zen jour­nal­ist and the so­cial me­dia jour­nal­ist has ef­fec­tively snatched space, eye­balls and at­ten­tion away from the eu­phemisti­cally-called main­stream me­dia.

The Farm­ers Mor­cha in Delhi has de­bunked Mod­ism and its me­dia mon­ger­ing. The fourth pil­lar of state -me­dia has fallen on the road­side in In­dia. De­spite pres­sures, the power of so­cial me­dia can­not be un­der­mined. If the well-oiled IT cell of the BJP can change peo­ples’ think­ing, so can every­body else. The cy­ber bat­tle is on.

A vast sec­tion of the print and satel­lite me­dia is hap­pily sit­ting in the lap of the gov­ern­ment of In­dia buy­ing all logic of the gov­ern­ment and re­li­giously fol­low­ing in­struc­tions and slanted news em­a­nat­ing from the PMO. This sec­tion of the me­dia is now pop­u­larly known as the Godi-me­dia -the me­dia en­joy­ing the warmth of the lap of the Naren­dra Modi gov­ern­ment be­cause of its money power and po­lit­i­cal back­ing. From sim­ple re­port­ing to ed­i­to­ri­al­is­ing, Godi-me­dia is pre­cisely the Modi-me­dia.

So­cial me­dia and web chan­nels have emerged as the al­ter­na­tive me­dia but even here the ul­tra-na­tion­al­is­tic fer­vour of some is at­tempt­ing to take over free space. The state ma­chin­ery also con­tin­ues to pres­sur­ize so­cial me­dia plat­forms into sub­mis­sion, un­der one pre­text or the other.

Led by the farm­ers, the peo­ple of Pun­jab, joined by the peo­ple of Haryana, while march­ing to Delhi, not only sur­passed the in­hu­man and bar­baric bar­ri­cades and threw them on the way­side, they ef­fec­tively side­lined that sec­tion of the me­dia which has be­come the pro­pa­ganda arm of the Modi gov­ern­ment, sur­pass­ing even Hitler’s Goe­belles pro­pa­ganda the­o­rems.

The Modi es­tab­lish­ment and the Modi me­di­a’s days are num­bered.

The Farm­ers Mor­cha in Delhi has de­bunked Mod­ism and its me­dia mon­ger­ing. The fourth pil­lar of state -me­dia has fallen on the road­side in In­dia. De­spite pres­sures, the power of so­cial me­dia can­not be un­der­mined. If the well-oiled IT cell of the BJP can change peo­ples’ think­ing, so can every­body else. The cy­ber bat­tle is on.

Time and again, ace se­nior jour­nal­ist and an­chor Rav­ish Ku­mar of NDTV has been say­ing that the best ser­vice that one can do to one­self in these try­ing times is to stop watch­ing the Godi-me­dia – a term coined by him. The farm­ers of Pun­jab have shown the way. The re­porters of Re­pub­lic, Zee News, Aaj Tak, ABVP News can­not cover the Farm­ers Mor­cha. Farm­ers -young and old, aware of their slant, have sim­ply re­fused to talk to them. They have put up a hu­man chain dis­al­low­ing this me­dia to in­ter­view them.

With all its pit­falls and weak­nesses, this is the be­gin­ning of a new era of the power of cit­i­zen jour­nal­ism. On the bor­ders of Delhi, the emo­tions ex­pressed by el­derly farm­ers, weep­ing young ladies from across In­dia se­verely pained by the at­tack on farm­ers, the bold slo­gans and com­pany of the chil­dren of Pun­jab has the po­ten­tial to usher in a rev­o­lu­tion for un­der­stand­ing pol­i­tics and po­lit­i­cal games.

The Cit­i­zen Jour­nal­ist will pre­vail. The phe­nom­e­non of Peo­ple’s power has been un­leashed. The Modi es­tab­lish­ment and the Modi me­di­a’s days are num­bered.